Hi everyone!
Modern media solutions are super useful, allowing us to hold onto the media that we hold most dear to us. Whether this is home videos, TV shows or movies, Plex is the most widely used media management tool today.
With compatibility for a ton of media formats, plus apps for just about every device, there’s no wonder is a favourite for media lovers.
However, there’s one issue that occurs for me more than any others. It isn’t directly related to Plex, but Plex certainly showed me this issue first.
If you have ever installed Plex on the default installation of Ubuntu, you have probably encountered a very annoying problem. Obviously, this will only happen if your Plex media store becomes big enough.
Also, for your reading pleasure, this post is also available on Medium too. You can find a link to it here!
Some Terminology
Ubuntu – This is a popular open-source Linux distribution based on Debian. It is known for its user-friendly interface, stability, and widespread community support.
Plex – A media server and streaming platform that allows users to organize, catalogue, and stream their digital media content, including movies, TV shows, music, and photos.
GParted – A graphical partition editor for Linux-based systems. It enables users to manage disk partitions on their computers. With GParted, users can create, delete, resize, move, and copy partitions on their hard drives.
LVM – LVM, or Logical Volume Manager, is a storage management solution for Linux. It provides a layer of abstraction over physical storage devices, allowing for flexible management of storage space. With LVM, users can create logical volumes that span multiple physical disks and dynamically resize them as needed.
The Cause – Plex: Not Enough Disk Space To Convert This Item
This issue occurs since Ubuntu doesn’t use the entire disk space for the root (‘/’) partition.
This issue is really annoying and shouldn’t really happen with a base install of Ubuntu as it takes quite a bit of work to fix. Something that a new user might be scared away from.
I was really struggling with this issue for a good couple of weeks. When I searched for this issue, none of the results were helpful.
The Fix
Depending on if you’ve used Linux or Ubuntu before, the fix will either look easy or intimidating. I’m here to give you a clear explanation and an easy fix to this issue. Basically, what we need to do is use a program called GParted. We will live-boot into this program in order to extend the partition into all the new free space.
First, you need to download the live CD/USB image from this link
Next, you need to create a bootable USB or CD using that image. I like to use rufus for this
Now, shutdown the machine and boot into the GParted live USB or CD
Startup the GParted GUI program on the desktop and extend the partition you want to expand:
Make sure to save the changes, close the GParted GUI and open the GParted terminal
Use the following command to enter the LVM manager:
sudo lvm
Now we can extend the default ubuntu-vg/ubuntu-lv partition to use all the available space. We can do this using the below command:
lvextend -I +100%FREE /dev/ubuntu-vg/ubuntu-lv
You can now exit the LVM manager using:
exit
Finally, you can resize the system to use the newly sized partition. We can do this with the following command:
sudo resize2fs /dev/ubuntu-vg/ubuntu-lv
All Done!
Your system should now be working fine, you can reboot the system and boot back into Ubuntu as you normally would. To triple check the system is using all the available space, you can use the following command:
sudo df -h
You will now find that the root (‘/’) directory is no longer 99%/100% full and your media can play.
Enjoy! 🎉
